Too indolent to change the local-access channel after the conclusion of an entertainingly contentious budget-meeting of the Canterbury selectmen, Merrion had watched the climax of one of those dances on television. The Whalens were standing awkwardly side-by-side like 4H livestock, a team of farm animals being auctioned off at the Big E Eastern States Exposition. Obviously not used to his clothing, Whalen wore a white shirt and narrow dark-red tie with a dark suit. His wife, whose name Merrion did not remember, wore a black dress with a high collar and long sleeves. They were standing on a low stage next to the "MAS morning disc jockey, a laboriously jovial, heavyset young man with a microphone, doing their best to look humble and grateful while the fat kid boastfully announced that a measly 'three or four thousand dollars have been collected, from hundreds and hundreds of people throughout the Pioneer Valley, reaching out to help the Whalen Family."
He did not say that ninety percent of it had been five and ten-dollar bills donated by people who knew the Whalens only slightly but really did feel sorry for them, or else had been asked by one of Whalen's fellow cops to make a donation and thought it might be provident to do so. The DJ did not say the rest was small change badgered out of contemptuous strangers who didn't know a thing or give one good shit about the Whalens and resented being forced to use their pocket change for once glad to have pennies to ransom themselves from the can-rattling solicitors they deemed fucking goddamned nuisances.
"Wonderful, wonderful people, every one of you," the DJ declaimed, extending his arms in symbolic embrace of people sitting at tables and standing in groups on the dance-floor under the balloons and crepe-paper festoons decorating the dimly lighted hall, staring in curiously some blearily at the Whalens. Because he knew Ev, Merrion had avidly watched the mortification, ashamed that he felt such fascination.
Then it had been time for Everett to grovel. He had taken the microphone and held it clumsily too close to his mouth so that it muffled his words, abjectly whinnying mandatory thanks to all the wonderful people who had worked on the great events and given money and helped out in any way at all; promising them that he and his wife he grasped her hand desperately, as though reasonably apprehensive she might come to her senses and bolt, try to get away while he was occupied and their healthy child, as well as the one being helped, would never forget their wonderful kindness and generosity. He did not quite promise to reciprocate on demand by donating one of his kidneys or a lung, his heart or liver, for that matter to any fundraiser who might ever need one and match his tissues, but he came pretty close.
As Merrion watched the event he'd begun to feel astonishment and wonder. He did not recall having given to the fund drive. He was reasonably sure that he had somehow inadvertently escaped every dragnet bagging all those niggardly donors. To the best of his recollection, it was the only such shakedown he had managed to elude since he'd first gotten into politics, forty years and more before. This amazed him. He calculated that in the course of his twenty-two-year career he had solicited campaign contributions for Dan Hilliard and other Democratic candidates and causes at least sixty times. The people on his trusty donor-list remembered him, with vengeance, when it came time for them to raise money for their candidates, colleges, church schools, drum-and-bugle corps, their children's teams and their favorite diseases, knowing he could not refuse. But somehow he'd escaped the posses of the Whalen Fund. He could not for the life of him explain how he'd done it, imagine what on earth he'd done or failed to do that had delivered him. Thereafter each time he saw Whalen at the station, he marveled silently once more.
"We got a couple more guests in since I called you," Whalen said. He leaned his right shoulder against the corridor wall and folded his arms. "Lady barkeep, good-lookin' head, from up Cannonball's, and we assume it's her gentleman friend that was with her. Routine coke buy.
He was scoutin' up the customers; she was keepin' the stash under the service bar.
"Statics got a new choirboy for undercover narc. He's the one who popped 'em. Looks like he's about sixteen. I guess he's actually twenny-three or four. They're workin' him out around here day and night this weekend without stoppin', seems like. Showin' him around like a new movie; anywhere you go you got a chance to see him. Hittin' every place they can. Settin' guys up left and right. Marijuana, cocaine, you-name-it; sellin' booze without asking' ID; solicitin' him for blow jobs; firearms; anything they can.
